October 6, 2008

Gmail’s security measures

With millions of users you would have thought that Gmail would have got their act together by now, well in some circumstances they already have, by adding improved security features this makes account hijacking much more difficult.

But many thousands of users are being locked out their own email accounts with no easy way of getting back in, this is because the getting to speak to someone at Google is a task in itself and even you did regaining access to the account could take days if not weeks.

Naturally should this happen, a user is going to be confused and angry, but Google take no notice of these tactics, their customer service page will mention the user not keeping their password safe etc. The strange thing is that in order for an account to be frozen it only takes a few failed attempts at getting in.

Source [NY Times]